A Bowl Full of Memories: 100 Years of Football at the Yale Bowl

PREFACE

A YALE FAN IS BORN

I have this recurring fantasy. I’m a Yale football player, standing on the field in the Yale Bowl after a Yale-Harvard game. The Bulldogs are victorious, and friends and family are greeting me, praising my heroics after beating haughty Harvard while the Yale and Harvard bands play Down the Field and Ten Thousand Men of Harvard under the fading November sun. My face is a football face—cut above the nose, bruised and battered. The helmet that I hold in my bloodstained hand has creased and reddened my forehead. The smeared eye black beneath my eyes is another reminder of what took place on this football afternoon.

Should a grandfather, who is on the back nine, be harboring such adolescent thoughts?

I say yes. I’m a certified, card-carrying, unabashed Yale football junkie. Not only have I attended virtually every home game in the last fifty years, but I attend practice on a fairly regular basis. Yale games serve as small anchors for my memory, reference points for marking where I was and whom I was with. The names of legends like Albie Booth, Larry Kelley, Clint Frank, Levi Jackson, Denny McGill, Brian Dowling, Calvin Hill, and John Pagliaro among others are eternally tattooed on my heart.

I never made it to the Bowl as a player but thanks to drum major David DeAngelis, a longtime friend, in 2007 I marched at halftime with the Yale Precision Marching Band, masquerading as a clarinet player. I simply followed the young Yalie on my right. My daughter-in-law Trisha trailed with a camera.

My journey into Yale football lore and the Yale Bowl began on Thanksgiving Day in 1948, when my dad and Uncle Leonard took a friend and me to the Bowl for the annual Hillhouse-West Haven High School football game. To borrow from Atlantic Journal writer Edward Weeks, It was one of those brisk, bronze November mornings with the sun low and touching everything with gold.

General Douglas MacArthur greets Army running back Bob Kyasky at a West Point practice. Coach Earl Red Blaik is to the far left.

(United States Military Academy)

I don’t recall much about the game which Hillhouse won, 20-6. I do remember, however, the enormous crowd that numbered over 40,000 in the Yale Bowl that seemed bigger than life.

My second visit to the Bowl was November 5, 1955, when Yale hosted Army. I was focused on Army running back Bullet Bob Kyasky, who was the pride of my hometown, Ansonia, Connecticut, as Yale’s Alex Thomas was in recent years. Kyasky’s father and mine worked together at the Anaconda American Brass Company at a time when the local factories belched out smoke over the Naugatuck River throughout the day.

1955 Yale-Army game day program

(Yale Athletics)

The pregame of marching cadets and martial music created a football environment second to none. The Army band proudly played . . .

On, Brave old Army team,

On to the fray,

Fight on to victory,

For that’s the fearless Army way.

The Yale side answered with Bulldog, Bulldog. This was football heaven.

Although Army was a heavy favorite, on this day the Elis met the supreme challenge by upsetting the 19th ranked Cadets 14-12 after being humbled 48-7 the year before.

My dad died in September of 1979. The final game we attended in the Bowl together was November 4, 1978, when Yale dumped Cornell, 42-14. By this time I had been bitten by the storied history of Yale football and the consecrated Yale Bowl.

Writing this book has allowed me to become a small part of the Yale football story which I have attempted to tell in this book through the approximately 200 first-person interviews of the men who wore the blue, the coaches, the media and the fans.

Thanks to dad, my life has been A Bowl Full of Memories.

Author Rich Marazzi (No. 40) is flanked by family members L-R: Rachel (daughter-in-law) and son Brian, wife Lois, and son Rich with granddaughter Caitlin, and daughter-in-law Trisha with grandson, Richie.

(Bill O’Brien)

Walter Camp

(Yale Athletics)

PROLOGUE

SIR WALTER

"What Washington was to his country,

[Walter] Camp was to American football:

the friend, the founder and father."

—John Heisman

The 1876 Yale team. Walter Camp is standing in rear second from the left. The captain is Eugene Baker. It is believed that this is the first year that Yale wore the letter Y on their uniform. Numbers were not worn until 1916.

(YALE ATHLETICS)

IF THERE IS a high priest in Yale football history, it is Walter Camp. A native of New Britain, Connecticut, Camp captained the Yale team in 1878 and 1879 and served without salary as Yale’s first head coach from 1888 to 1892. As coach, he compiled a 67-2 record, his teams playing a busy thirteen to sixteen games each year.

His position as sales manager of the New Haven Clock Company, where he later was treasurer and president, limited his time for coaching. The solution was that his wife, Alice, became in effect co-coach. She went to the field every afternoon, carrying Walter’s instructions.

Walter Camp teaches passing to Billy Knox circa 1906.

(YALE ATHLETICS)

THE MASTER INNOVATOR

Sir Walter reshaped a game that was essentially English rugby into American football. He took the game from an ill-defined struggle to one with rules and organization of some sophistication. He pushed for teams of eleven men rather than rugby’s fifteen. He replaced rugby’s scrum with the scrimmage, from which set plays could be run, and he instituted scoring in points rather than the tally of goals as in soccer. He started the downs system. It evolved from three downs to make five yards to four downs to make ten yards by 1906. He used the earliest form of the T-formation, with the quarterback giving spoken signals.

The respect in which Camp was held reached all corners. A letter written in 1892 by Notre Dame coach James Kivlan to Camp reads, Walter Camp: Dear Sir, I want to ask a favor of you. Will you kindly furnish me with some points on the best way to develop a good Football Team . . . I know something of the Rugby game, but would like to find out the best manner to handle the men . . .

Changing Football’s Rules

In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Camp and other college officials to the White House to discuss ways to make the game safer. T.R. loved football but he campaigned for reform because of the barbarous and brutal nature of the sport that resulted in many deaths and injuries.

As a result, the football rules committee chaired by Dr. Paul Dashiell agreed to major changes, making the forward pass legal in 1906. Dashiell supported Roosevelt and the reformers in legalizing the forward pass, which reduced the frequency of dangerous collisions between helmetless players. The committee’s fourteen members included three Yale men—Camp, Amos Alonzo Stagg, and Dr. Harry Williams.

Despite Camp’s innovative contributions to the game, he resisted the forward pass. His objections may have led to rules that today would be considered draconian. For example, a team could not score a touchdown on a forward pass. If a pass went out of bounds, the ball was turned over to the opposing team. And if the ball hit the ground without anyone touching it, the ball also went to the opposing team.

On November 1, 1913, Notre Dame beat Army 35-13 at West Point when Irish quarterback Gus Dorais passed for 243 yards in front of the New York press. Unlike today’s pass-happy offenses, teams that amassed hundreds of passing yards were unheard of at the time. Although Notre Dame did not invent the forward pass, this game changed the way the game would be played.

CAMP’S LEGACY

For decades Camp selected an All-America team, which was intended to recognize outstanding play and accomplishment. Whether the idea came from Camp or Caspar Whitney, manager of a magazine called The Week’s Sport, is open to argument, but Camp either chose or collaborated on an All-America team every year from 1889 through 1924.

During World War I the hunch-shouldered Camp, who wore a distinctive blond mustache, was Chairman of the Athletic Department of the Navy Commission on War Training Camp Activities. He developed a Daily Dozen fitness program for servicemen that was adopted by many Americans.

On March 14, 1925, Walter Camp died in his sleep between sessions of the intercollegiate football rules committee meeting in New York City. Camp served on or advised every national rules committee from the time he was a student-player in 1878 until his death. Accounts in the New York Times indicate Camp, who was three weeks shy of his sixty-sixth birthday, was not visibly ill when he turned in for the night at the Hotel Belmont. The next morning Princeton coach Bill Roper, the hotel manager, and a carpenter went to his room and found Camp dead after he failed to show for the meeting. Legendary Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne said of Camp’s death, His loss to the sporting world is irreparable. He was not only one of the leading figures of football, but of all college sports and physical education as well. He has done more for college football . . . than any other man may ever do.

Camp is buried at the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven alongside his wife and son, Walter Camp Jr., who lettered in football at Yale in 1911 and 1912.

In 1988 Walter Camp Football Foundation past President Bill O’Brien initiated a drive to get Camp placed on a U.S. postal stamp. Thanks to the efforts of O’Brien, past Walter Camp President Kenneth Dagliere, former U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman, and then U.S. Postal Board Governor John Walsh, Camp was honored on a stamp that also included football icons Bronko Nagurski, Ernie Nevers, and Red Grange. The first day of issue was August 8, 2003.

Walter Camp gravestone

(RICH MARAZZI)

THE WALTER CAMP MEMORIAL GATEWAY

Dedicated on November 3, 1928, before the Yale-Dartmouth game, the Walter Camp Memorial Gateway on Derby Avenue is the eye-catching entrance to the Walter Camp Field, of which Yale Bowl is one unit. Designed by John W. Cross (’00), the Gateway is a series of lofty stone pillars, flanked on each side by low walls of stone and brick extending 400 feet. Tablets set into the walls on each side of the gateway bear the names of the 224 colleges and the total number of prep and high schools all over the nation that joined with Yale in honoring the memory of Camp by helping to finance the structure that cost $300,000. But even the best laid plans are subject to error. The name Rensselaer is misspelled Rensselear.

REMEMBERING MR. CAMP

Al Ostermann

A few years after the Bowl opened I received my first football, and would you believe, it was from Walter Camp, ‘the father of modern football,’ and Tad Jones, a legend, who like Camp, both played and coached at Yale.

"My mother had a cousin who was a German professor at Yale. He was a roommate of Tad’s and he knew that I was interested in football but didn’t have my own football. My mother had another cousin who worked at the Yale Library. I was told to go there and someone would give me a football. When I got there, Walter Camp and Tad handed me the football. Camp said, ‘I hope someday you’ll come to Yale.’

Unfortunately, I don’t have the football. When I was a kid and you had a ball, you were a pretty popular guy. We played pickup games with that ball and it didn’t last long.

Bill O’Brien

George ‘Papa Bear’ Halas, the legendary Chicago Bears coach and owner, was the recipient of the Walter Camp Distinguished American Award for 1980. He wanted to visit the Bowl. So we drove down route 34 and through the entrance of the Walter Camp Memorial Archway. I took his picture standing in front of the columns. We became close friends over the years and I cherish the 14 letters he has sent me.

George Papa Bear Halas stands in front of the Walter Camp Memorial Gate in 1981.

(BILL O’BRIEN)

George Grande

"I’ve had the prestigious honor to emcee the annual Walter Camp banquet at the Yale Commons on three different occasions. And from 1972-78 my brother, Carlo, and I did a broadcast from the event on WNHC radio.

"The night before the dinner when we honored George ‘Papa Bear’ Halas and Gale Sayers, there was a reception and cocktail party at Mory’s [a private club adjacent to the Yale campus, founded in 1849]. Sitting in the back of the room were Mr. Halas and George McCaskey, the founder and owner of the Chicago Bears. I got to know Mr. Halas from covering the NFL on ESPN and CBS-TV.

"When I greeted Mr. Halas he beamed, ‘Oh Grandy, how are you?’ And referring to himself, he went on, ‘Who ever would have thought that some broken-down football player is here at Yale and is going to be a part of the Walter Camp Football Foundation? Do you realize who Walter Camp was?’

"‘Papa Bear’ knew everything about Camp. He then pointed his finger at me and asked, ‘Do you know what the greatest football program in America was? It wasn’t the Chicago Bears; it wasn’t the New York Giants; it was Yale!’

That night Mr. Halas bought each of us a Mory’s cup and saucer as a memento of the night. I’ll always cherish that gift.

PART I

The Yale Bowl

100 Years of Memories

The Yale Bowl, 1914.

(YALE ATHLETICS)

CHAPTER 1

THE BIRTH OF THE BOWL

"When you walk out of the tunnel

onto the field you feel like a gladiator

entering the Colosseum."

—Carmen Cozza

THE HISTORIC YALE Bowl with its Class of 1954 Field is where titans have wrestled for glory for a century and is a magnet of civic pride. It is the proud child of one of college football’s most storied programs and one of the oldest Division I stadiums in the country. One week after Princeton’s Palmer Memorial Stadium opened, the Bowl was unveiled for the Yale-Harvard game on November 21, 1914. At the time, it was the largest stadium in the world and the first stadium with seating that completely encircled the field.

The famous man-made crater that covers 12.5 acres of land lies under the lean shadow of West Rock. It is a venue shaped by history. In 1987 it was declared a National Historic Landmark and was chosen by the Sporting News as one of the 40 best college football stadiums in its 2005 book, Saturday Shrines. Unlike Harvard Stadium that is modeled on the ancient dignified stadiums of Greece and Rome with its ivy-clad arches and classic Doric colonnade, Yale Bowl is more expansive and pragmatic.

Other stadiums have copied the Bowl’s design without capturing its charm. Born the same year as Wrigley Field in Chicago and two years after Fenway Park opened its gates in Boston, the Yale Bowl became a model for other stadiums such as the Rose Bowl and Michigan Stadium, the Big House.

THE TRAIL TO THE BOWL: YALE FIELD I AND YALE FIELD II

Yale initially played its football games at Hamilton Park in New Haven from 1872 to 1883. Originally called Brewster Park, it was located at the intersection of Whalley Avenue and West Park Avenue. Built in the 1850s, the park served as home to every Yale athletic event. The New Haven Register reported that Yale fielded its first baseball team there in 1865 and seating was limited with just one grandstand that held 198.

In 1881, a tract of land was secured on the south side of Derby Avenue two miles west of the Yale campus with the assistance of two members of the class of 1881, Adrian S. Van Der Graff, and Charles S. White. This would become Yale Field where baseball and football games were played starting in 1884. Any playing venue (baseball or football) on the site was referred to as Yale Field.

There has never been a formal distinction such as Yale Field I and Yale Field II as separate Yale football venues. But perhaps there should be since Yale played football games on two different physical locations at Yale Field.

Based on images provided by Sam Rubin, the assistant director of sports publicity at Yale, in 1884 Yale played on a field that ran perpendicular from center field of the current baseball field westward toward what is now the Clint Frank Field in the DeWitt Cuyler Complex where the J.V. team plays their games and the varsity team currently practices. There were no seats and spectators gathered around the sidelines. I have designated this Yale Field I, a venue previously ignored by historians.

Yale Field II

Yale Field II ran north and south in what is now the DeWitt Cuyler complex. It is difficult to determine exactly what year Yale Field II was established. Photos as early as 1892 show a grandstand. In 1897, an apparent expansion of wooden grandstands were installed at a cost of $16,000 to accommodate 15,000. In 1903 the seating capacity increased to 29,000, then to 32,000 in 1906. It topped out at 35,000 (some sources say 33,090) in 1908 making it the largest wooden stands field ever constructed. Yale Field II served as Yale’s home field until Yale Bowl’s inauguration in 1914. Because of the lack of facilities, the teams remained on the field at halftime reviewing instructions from the coaches.

The 1910 Yale-Harvard game ended in a scoreless tie before an overflow crowd at Yale Field II.

(LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

Before 1900, it was clear that the football program was a profit-generating machine and that a larger stadium was needed. By the 1890s, Yale’s football receipts accounted for one-eighth of the institution’s total income, an amount greater than its expenditures on law and medicine, wrote George Will in the January 5, 2013, edition of the New Haven Register.

But Yale Field II could not meet the demand of the large crowds. It was reported that in the seven years prior to the completion of the Bowl, the Yale Athletic Office lost $100,000 in ticket sales because of insufficient seating. Also, the annual expense for repairs amounted to between $10,000 and $12,000.

THE COMMITTEE OF TWENTY-ONE

Recognizing that Yale Field was undersized to meet the demands of ticket requests, the Yale Corporation appointed a committee of seven graduates to study the issue and make recommendations. S.J. Elder (1871) chaired the committee that reported the necessity of a new structure. In 1910 the Yale Corporation appointed and incorporated the Committee of Twenty-One to study ways of improving the athletic facilities. Thomas DeWitt Cuyler (1874), chairman, and David Daggett (1879), secretary, headed the Structures Committee within the Committee of Twenty-One.

The Committee purchased eighty-five acres of land across the street from Yale Field. The land was reserved for different sports including tennis and squash. The northeast corner was chosen as the site for the Bowl. Yale alumnus Arthur Thompson donated a large parcel of land and sold another section to the Committee below market price. Another unnamed graduate advanced a large sum of money at a low rate of interest. The plot given by Thompson was named Anthony Thompson Field located near the current site of the Armory where the polo horses were housed near Lot D. Another section was named Gordon Brown Field after Yale’s four-time All-America guard.

PLANS FOR A MULTI-SPORTS COMPLEX

Plans called for the new stadium to be part of a complex serving several sports so that the space would not sit idle for ten months of the year. A sketch in the June 9, 1912, New York Times shows existing and proposed sites for track, baseball, hockey, tennis, and squash as well as a clubhouse. After lengthy debate and the demolition of the football stadium named Yale Field, track competition was relocated to the site on which it stood, now the DeWitt Cuyler Athletic Complex. The hockey rink that opened in January 1912 on Derby Avenue near the West River served Yale only briefly. Soil problems and the opening of the first New Haven Arena, located downtown at State and Wall streets, led Yale to move its home games to the Arena in January 1914.

Multi-Sports Complex

Members of the Yale Field Corporation engaged Leoni Robinson, a prominent New Haven architect, to prepare a preliminary design for a closed-end stadium on the site of the current baseball field that would exceed Harvard’s seating capacity of 38,000. The Yale Field Corporation presented Robinson’s drawings and proposals to the Alumni Advisory Board that appointed a committee to study the stadium problem in 1911.

According to William A. Wiedershein (’40), in an article written for the 1989 Yale-Harvard game day program, Robinson drew up five different stadium plans, seating between 37,608 and 50,628. The proposals were for an above ground structure. Under Robinson’s plans access and exiting would have been difficult which is most likely why they were never used. Robinson’s designs and drawings were found in the late 1980s in the carriage house of his summer home in Maine.

The problem was solved when a design of a new stadium was submitted to the Committee of Twenty-One by architect Charles A. Ferry (Sheffield 1871). Sheffield was the scientific school at the Yale College. Ferry’s design partially echoed the campus’s neogothic design. It also met the challenge of creating a stadium that would hold at least 60,000, have ample entrances, be strong and durable with low cost for construction and maintenance, be safe for spectators, be fireproof and structurally sound, and have adequate access and exiting. The issue of fireproofing was especially important to the Committee because during this time fires in various large stadia in Europe and the United States had resulted in many casualties. The South End Grounds in Boston, Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, and Philadelphia’s Base Ball park are some examples. It is believed that many fires resulted from cigars that were not properly extinguished.

Charles Ferry, designer of the Yale Bowl

(YALE ATHLETICS)

To meet all of these criteria, the Committee settled on an oval stadium constructed of earth faced with concrete, a concept somewhat similar to reservoir construction, from which the idea derived. The oval shape of the Bowl allows every spectator to have an unobstructed view of the four corners of the playing field. The architectural features of the Bowl were worked out by Donn Barber (1893, Sheffield). The estimated cost of the construction of the football stadium was $300,000. In addition, the purchase of land was estimated at $150,000); improvements of the new grounds $100,000, a new clubhouse $100,000, and stands for the baseball field $50,000, for a total estimated cost of $700,000. The final cost of the Bowl was reported to be $750,000. This included the improvements made to the fields around it. If it had been built entirely above ground level, it is estimated that costs would have doubled to about $1.5 million. According to DollarTimes.com $750,000 in 1914 would have an approximate calculated value today of $9.2 million considering an annual 2.71 inflation rate.

FINANCING THE BOWL

In 1900 Walter Camp became treasurer of the Yale Field Corporation and quietly accumulated an enormous sum of money which formed the nucleus of the fund used to build the Bowl.

According to Tim Cohane, author of The Yale Football Story, Camp had saved $135,000. It had been agreed that when Camp retired from all formal connection with Yale athletics in 1910, the money would be turned over to the construction of a new football stadium. But more funds were needed.

The question of financing such a project became an issue of concern for the Committee of Twenty-One. Its members concluded that Yale should not fund a football stadium. Instead, the Committee constituted itself a holding guaranty company that was authorized to raise funds by subscription. Yale alums, undergraduates, and friends of the University were offered preferred rights to tickets. The Ticket Privilege Contract would give subscribers the right to apply for tickets to all games in the Coliseum (Bowl). A subscription of $1,000 or more entitled a subscriber to ten tickets per game on a multiyear basis. The plan scaled down to $100 certificates. The majority of subscribers’ rights expired in 1930, according to an article in the October 22, 1927, Yale-Army game day program. This was good news for disgruntled alums who had been unable to obtain the premium seats that had been set aside for subscribers.

NAMING THE NEW STADIUM

There was a major dispute among Committee members over what to call the new structure. Should it be named Yale Bowl, Yale Stadium, Yale Coliseum, Yale Arena, or Yale Amphitheater?

David Daggett, the secretary of the Committee of Twenty-One, said in an interview with the Yale Daily News: The name ‘Bowl’ was first suggested by Mr. Noah H. Swayne Jr. (class of 1893), one of our Committee, and my recollection is that a vote was passed endorsing its term. The word ‘Bowl’ has the added advantage of being short and suggestive of the general appearance of the structure looking at it from the top down.

Speaking at the 1912 commencement exercise, Yale University’s President, Arthur Twining Hadley, endorsed the name when he said, I am glad that Yale, in spite of its classical traditions, prefers the good old word ‘Bowl,’ with its savor of manly English sport, to the ‘coliseum’ of the Romans or the ‘stadium’ of the Greeks. At the time, the title Bowl for an outdoor athletic facility had never been used before.

Hadley led the groundbreaking on Monday, June 23, 1913, at 5 p.m.

THE EARLY STAGES OF CONSTRUCTION

The building permit for the Bowl was issued on July 19, 1913, by the city of New Haven through Building Inspector J.E. Austin. The Committee of Twenty-One was listed as owner of the land. The purpose of the building was listed as Foot ball amphitheatre. The cost of the construction listed for this phase was $175,000. Construction was scheduled to begin on August 1, 1913.

Construction lasted sixteen months with a crew of about 145 men hired by the Sperry Engineering Company of New Haven. Yale grad Everard Thompson directed the construction details and also coordinated the allotment of 70,000 tickets for the first game.

The Bowl attained national fame during its construction. Its engineering feat has been compared to the digging of the Panama Canal.

Before the excavation or digging process began, wood gated portals were constructed around the perimeter of the future Bowl. Then a process called cut and fill was used. Simply stated, the plan was to dig a hole, then use the 320,000 cubic yards of soil to build the surrounding walls or berm. The Coliseum of Pompeii in Italy was the only other known structure in the world with the same architecture.

Portal development

(YALE ATHLETICS)

From ground level an excavation was made about 27 ½- feet to the floor (playing field) which was called the cut process. The material or earth that was dug up was used for building the surrounding berm or embankment to a height of 26 feet. This was the fill. Therefore, the top to the bottom of the Bowl measures 53 ½- feet.

The design allowed for two tunnels that serve as the entrance to the playing field for the players and coaches. The sides and roof of each tunnel were reinforced with steel.

William Sperry, the contractor for the project, built a circular track just outside the outer wall and placed two high towers, from the tops of which large cables ran to heavy posts set on the farther side of the Bowl. A large drag bucket was operated from each tower, running out on the main cable and being dragged back by another cable. Two small rotary steam shovels were used to dig what the towers could not reach.

Horses were used during the construction for grazing the field and pulling the cable on the earth bucket. They also carried away receptacles brimming with soil before the advent of the bulldozer. Although there is no concrete evidence, it’s possible that some horses are buried under the Bowl’s turf.

If a horse died during the Bowl’s excavation, most likely it was buried under the playing field of the Bowl, said former Yale’s Sports Turf Supervisor Tom Pepe. Although it has been widely speculated that the steam shovels used in the excavation are buried under the Bowl turf, there is no evidence of that. Some believe that sections of the shovels were dismantled but parts were buried.

According to documents in the Ferry files at the Yale University Library, during the Bowl’s construction a sandstorm whisked and whirled tons of loose earth and grit through the city and out over the harbor . . . in the most Saharan style. Although no date was given, it was most likely May 27, 1914. The Hartford Courant reported that at the end of the first half inning of the Yale-Holy Cross baseball game, a blinding sand-storm made the teams leave the field. The game was eventually rained out after three delays.

Cable tower used for excavation

(YALE ATHLETICS)

Excavation towers outside Bowl complete the cut process.

(YALE ATHLETICS)

LATER MODIFICATIONS

In 1920 the temporary bleachers on the upper portion of the Yale Bowl were replaced by permanent facing of concrete, built in steps, and new bleachers with malleable iron standards, all similar to the lower portion of the Bowl. The press box was also erected at this time.

The original concrete construction was only for the lower half of the Bowl, explained Pepe. The upper half of the Bowl was constructed with temporary wooden bleachers built on soil into the dirt embankment. At the time, there were no mechanical means to compact the soil for the embankment. The engineers knew that if they waited several years, the soil for the embankment would settle and harden enough to support the concrete.

The cost of this phase was $175,000 and was again funded by ticket privileges (15 years) for Yale men. Subscriptions were eventually opened to the public.

Once the 30 feet of walls were formed around the Bowl to support the top rows of seats, the wooden-backed seats were installed. In 1931 ornamental 7-foot × 7-foot iron gates replaced the wooden gates at the portals.

The original bleachers, constructed of Oregon Douglas fir, were painted gray but repainted to true blue in 1959. (Some of the old bleachers from the Bowl were installed at the Shake Shack, a popular Yalie burger spot on Chapel Street in New Haven.)

Berm or fill from excavated soil creates the outer wall of the Bowl.

(YALE ATHLETICS)

SIZE AND, SEATING CAPACITY

The Bowl is 930 feet long and 750 feet wide. The Woolworth Building could be put to bed within its walls, reported the New York Times in 1921, referring to the tallest building in the world at the time.

There are sixty concrete steps from the surface of the Bowl to the top in each of the spaces between portals. The inner slope that serves as a foundation for the sixty steps was given a dished shape so that a person in the top seat has the same ability to see over the heads of people in front as someone in the second row.

The original design provided for 60,617 permanent seats, with each of the 30 portals handling about 2,000 spectators. There was space for 600 in the press area and 50 in the photographers stands, of these 249 were provided with seats. A 1912 rule change that shortened the playing field from 110 yards to 100 saved space and allowed for more seating. Bleacher seats built on the promenade around the top of the Bowl expanded capacity to nearly 71,000, and on certain occasions bleachers were installed inside the Bowl’s inner wall, practically at field level, to handle crowds exceeding 75,000. Of the ten largest crowds in Bowl history, most were for games against Army.

In 1921 Ferry had a plan to increase the seating capacity of the Bowl from 64,015 to 117,000 by adding an upper deck but it never gained traction. Clarence W. Mendell, chairman of the Yale Athletic Advisory Committee, called the proposal a pipe dream.

Before 1994 the seating capacity was 70,869. Because of subsequent alterations and a major restoration in the 2000s, it is now 61,446.

AN IDIOSYNCRATIC STADIUM

Optical Illusion

According to the Ferry report only 20,000 seats are enclosed between the goal lines extended, and that more than 40,000 are in the end zones. This optical illusion translates into two-thirds of the spectators sitting in the end zones when the Bowl is filled to capacity. The late David Halberstam, a prominent author and Harvard man, once described the Yale Bowl as the most democratic of arenas where there were no bad seats, and for that matter no good seats.

A Yale man might counter, Harvard Stadium is like sitting on a block of ice.

Hamden, Connecticut, native and veteran broadcaster George Grande disagrees with Halberstam. In my opinion the Yale Bowl remains the best place to watch a football game in America, said Grande. I played freshman football at USC and recall running onto the field at the Los Angeles Coliseum and how immense it was. I’ve been to Notre Dame, Ohio State, Michigan, and others. There is no place that is as perfectly constructed and puts you as close to the action as the Bowl does.

An Auditory and Astronomical Wonder

According to a report written by Ferry to the American Society of Civil Engineers on November 15, 1916, Under favorable conditions when there are only a few people in the stadium, a whisper spoken at the center of the field can be distinctly heard at the tunnel portals where the players enter and exit. A conversation in an ordinary tone of voice can be carried on between persons stationed on opposite sides of the Bowl which is also referred to as an amphitheater.

The report added, The Yale Bowl is also an astronomical wonder. The designers positioned the Bowl so that the minor axis points to the sun at 3 p.m. on Nov. 15th. Thus no football player in the Bowl would ever have to look into the sun when Yale plays its big games against Princeton and Harvard.

Approximately two-thirds of the 60,617 seats in the Bowl are in the end zones.

(YALE ATHLETICS)

The Mystery of the Rest Rooms

The 1916 Ferry report stated, The plans for the permanent toilets and the permanent fence have not been finally settled. Ferry also wrote that the cost of permanent toilets was not included in the original estimate of the Bowl. Is that to be interpreted as an oversight when construction of the Bowl began, or was the issue of the rest rooms and a permanent fence, items for discussion? Chances are this was an oversight since it would hardly seem logical that plans for a stadium as large as the Yale Bowl would not include rest rooms in its original architectural plans. Temporary toilets, located outside the stadium, were used from 1914 through the 1930 seasons. The current eight exterior rest rooms that surround the Bowl were added in 1931 at a cost of $80,000 by the Dwight Construction Co.

LAPHAM FIELD HOUSE

Fans often have wondered why there are no dressing rooms in the Yale Bowl. According to Pepe, There were two gate-houses that were scheduled to be built for showers, dressing rooms etc. for the teams at the entrances of both tunnels where the teams enter the field but construction never took place because of a shortage of funds.

In 1923 the Lapham Field House was built on a tract of land off Derby Avenue. Henry G. Lapham (’97), a wealthy Boston investment banker and president of the Boston Garden-Arena Corporation, donated $350,000 for the construction of a clubhouse to be used by athletes in all forms of outdoor sports.

Lapham stipulated that he would make a pledge for such a structure but it would have to be free-standing and separate from the Bowl with his name on it, explained Pepe.

Thanks to a $5.37 million gift from Joel E. Smilow (’54) and another $1.7 million gift from other alumni, the Lapham Field House was renovated and expanded and is now called the Smilow Field Center.

CHAPTER 2

THE GRAND OPENING

"As a spectacle it was of an indescribable

sort; people saw it from the outside as

a low but huge green fort, only to come

out at the thirty portal ends into a vast

and sunlit arena"

—Yale Alumni Weekly

(November 27, 1914)

The first scrimmage in the Yale Bowl, 1914

(LIBRARY OF CONGRESS LC-US262-12893)

YALE HAD HOPED to open the Bowl against Notre Dame on October 17, 1914, but the new stadium was not ready until November 21. The two teams played at Yale Field II with the Bulldogs blanking the Irish 28-0.

On November 10, a large crowd of city and college enthusiasts gathered downtown at 1:45 p.m. and proceeded to march to the Bowl. They went on to the field where they sang their battle songs and practiced cheering. Of course, the singing and cheering reflected genuine enthusiasm, but it was also intended to measure how the noise would affect the opposing quarterback when giving signals.

The following day, led by coach Frank Hinkey, Yale scrimmaged in the new facility. Although it was reported that several thousand fans turned up, the above photo taken on that day indicates otherwise.

PREPARING FOR THE GRAND OPENING

Shopping

In anticipation of the opening game against Harvard, there were multiple retailers in the New Haven Evening Register advertising heavy outer wear and other items to prepare for the late November chill. Muhlfelder’s on Chapel St. pushed fur coats, Hudson seal, pony, raccoon and leopard for as low as $25 and as high as $350. The Edward Malley Co. department store advertised heavy Shakir Knit Worsted Sweaters with a large shawl collar from $5 to $7. Other items included straw seats (5 cents), flasks (65 cents to $4), Yale flags, pennants, arm bands, warm gloves, raincoats, and umbrellas. Warm wool Steamer Rug blankets sold from $4.50 to $12. The Davis Drug Co. sold field and opera glasses so that no matter where your seat is you can see every play. Women in search of evening gowns for the big weekend could find one at the Shartenberg and Robinson Co. for $19.85.

Scalpers and Betting

The Bowl was reported completed on November 17. Even though there were 70,055 available seats—excluding the media area or stand for the nearly 300 newspapermen and telegraphers who would cover the game—there was intense demand for the two-dollar tickets. Scalpers, or speculators, were selling them for five to ten dollars each. One such speculator, Carlos Greeley of Brooklyn, New York, was arrested when he offered a detective two tickets for twenty-five dollars. He was fined ten dollars and court costs. The New York Times reported that a Chicago businessman paid five hundred dollars for five tickets.

The Yale ticket office, aware of the scalping, established a policy forbidding graduates to sell to speculators. Everard Thompson of the Yale ticket office was deluged with requests. Harvard applied for 25,000, Yale grads asked for 27,322, undergrads requested 11,042, and the Committee of Twenty-One wanted 3,268. By November 20, the day before the game, applications for tickets passed the 80,000 mark. The orderly line at the ticket office in Durfee Hall turned into a surging mob. Thompson, who also had overseen the Bowl construction details, collapsed—apparently from stress and exhaustion.

Betting was active. A $7 wager on underdog Yale might have won $10. The Harvards wanted even money. A group of Yale students collectively wagered $1,500 on the Bulldogs, and a group of Harvard Cantabrigians confidently sent $3,000 to New Haven to be laid out at odds of 5 to 3.

Security and Safety

The New Haven police department was in uncharted waters in dealing with a crowd of more than 70,000. City officials made provisions for an emergency hospital near the Bowl. Soliciting nurses, doctors, ambulances and cots was part of the planning.

The city’s force of 304 police officers (including supernumeraries) was spread thin. Police Chief Philip T. Smith warned citizens to lock their doors and windows. Out-of-town detectives were brought in to help the local gendarmes.

The Teams Work Out

The Harvard team stayed at the Mohican Hotel in New London, Connecticut, and journeyed the roughly fifty miles to New Haven in two waves. The vanguard, which arrived on Thursday, November 19, consisted of coaches and nineteen players, limited to backs and centers. The remaining linemen arrived at 1 p.m. the next day.

The backs and centers were taken to the Bowl on Thursday afternoon to get oriented. The turf was soggy, the result of an earlier snowstorm that had turned to rain. The Yale team worked out in the Bowl after Harvard’s practice. On Friday a steamroller was used to force the water out of the turf, which had been laid six weeks earlier. However, the excellent drainage system had carried off most of the water. A thick covering of hay was spread nightly during the week to protect the turf and keep it as hard as possible.

November 20, 1914

Since there were no locker rooms in the new Bowl and the field house hadn’t yet been built, the Yale team dressed in the gym to prepare for practice. At that time the gym was located at the present site of the Trumbull College dining hall on the north side of Elm Street between York and High Streets. The team held a light practice at the old Yale Field II and according to the New York Times celebrated their departure by cheering the historic structure lustily.

The Elis only used the hay-covered Bowl field to practice punting and drop kicking. After their light workout, they went to the Quinnipiack Club on Church Street for dinner. Later that evening the team held a signal drill in the baseball cage.

A full contingent of Harvard players came to New Haven and had lunch at the Hotel Taft. They then took special trolleys to the Bowl and dressed in the Yale trackhouse before working out on Friday afternoon at the baseball field, located at the site of the current field. Following the workout, the Harvard team returned to New London.

Pregame Atmosphere

Despite miserable weather, the Elm City and the Yale campus were bustling with excitement on the eve of the game. An estimated 20,000 clamored for rooms. A University Bureau of Information was placed in Osborn Hall for their convenience. The University dining hall, the Dwight Hall grill and the University Club were among those holding open houses. Guests filled the local hotels and boarding houses to the brim. The Hotel Taft, which held its grand opening only two years earlier, reportedly had 676 guests and served 6,900 dinners. Because the city was unable to adequately house the overload of spectators, many had to find lodging in surrounding cities and towns.

Yale alumni returned and partied at Mory’s, Tut’s, Heub’s, and other student watering holes. There was a joint concert of the Yale and Harvard musical clubs at Woolsey Hall and an all-night dance at the Hotel Taft. Popular songs of the day included Alexander’s Rag Time Band and It’s a Long Way to Tipperary. Advance ticket sales for the local theaters were heavy. The historic Shubert Theater was quiet with its opening three weeks away.

Old Yale gridiron notables like Walter Camp, Ray Biglow, Ray Tompkins, Malcome McBride, Jack Owsley, Jack Field, and others relaxed in the coaches counsel in room 117 of the Hotel Taft.

GAME DAY: NOVEMBER 21, 1914

It was sunny and not very cold. A light northwest breeze came puffing down from the Connecticut Hills. World War I in Europe (then referred to as the Great War) seemed like a million miles from New Haven with so much interest centered on the opening of the spectacular amphitheater. The Bowl was mega news and was heralded as the greatest athletic structure in the world. The New Haven Evening Register proudly proclaimed, Made in New Haven. The Greatest Amphitheater in the World. The New Mammoth Yale Bowl.

Mass transportation played a major role in getting fans to and from the game. According to Yale historian Thomas Bergin, The New Haven Railroad ran twenty-five specials from New York and fifteen from Boston; about 35,000 arrived by train.

Once in New Haven, thousands boarded the 150 trolleys that buzzed through the city. It was recommended by some that walking to the Bowl was the best bet.

Chapel Street was like Times Square on New Year’s Eve with hucksters and fakers dispensing Yale-Harvard memorabilia. The New York Times reported, In every store window in the city was a big bulldog with its collar of blue silk ribbons.

Some well-heeled old Blues most likely droveup in their glitzy Stutz Bearcats and parked in one of the 6,000 spaces available. Elm Street was so snarled with auto traffic that crossing the street at noon was impossible. Special automobile routes were established from the outlying towns.

A special train carrying the Harvard team left New London at 9:45 a.m. and was scheduled to arrive in New Haven at 11 a.m. The team remained in the parlor cars and went directly to the Bowl. This leaves one to speculate that they dressed in their New London hotel.

The First Fan in the Bowl

Most likely the first fan to make his way into the Bowl was Al Ostermann, an eight-year-old from the neighborhood. The night before the first game, I dug a hole under a fence and put leaves in the hole, said Ostermann. "I made my own tunnel. The next day I crawled into the hole to get through the fence. I then entered the Bowl through a portal about 7:30 in the morning.

"I made a position for myself inside at the top of the Bowl, under the seats. A lot of kids who snuck in were seated just above the portals at midfield where the players come out, and they were thrown out.

"At 11 a.m. the crowd started to file in for the grand opening. An older couple found me curled up like a squirrel, chilled to the bone, and offered me a cup of coffee. It was the first cup of coffee I ever had.

Of the first 500 games played in the Yale Bowl, I saw 499 of them. The only game I missed was because I attended an Army game. A few days after the 1977 Yale-Harvard game, I suffered a heart attack. When my wife, Eleanor, visited me in the intensive-care unit of the hospital, I whispered to her, ‘At least I made it through the end of the season.’

The Arrival of the Fans

Once the fans arrived at the Bowl they were greeted by throngs of vendors hawking pennants, badges, and buttons, along with hot dogs, sandwiches and fruit. Some fans entered the Bowl immediately upon arrival while others watched the Yale-Harvard soccer game that was being played across the street at Yale Field II. If they were lucky they could have caught an intercollegiate cross country race involving eleven colleges that started and ended in the Bowl, perhaps the first official sports event held (partially) in the Bowl.

Yale issued a special eighteen-page program to commemorate the grand opening. This program featured full-page color illustrations of the Yale Bowl before, during, and after its construction. For fans who did not attend Yale or Harvard games regularly, identifying the players was difficult since the players’ jerseys were not yet numbered.

During the game an airship flight advertised over the Bowl added a spectacular touch.

Al Ostermann saw 499 of the first 500 games played in the Yale Bowl and was most likely the first spectator to step into the Bowl.

(NEW HAVEN REGISTER)

A total of 1,400 attendants were tasked with ushering approximately 70,000 fans, the largest crowd ever to attend a sporting event in the United States. The Roman Colosseum with its grim drama of human torture, the great stone arena of Pompeii, the massive amphitheatre at ancient Carthage were never so densely populated with humans as the Yale Bowl was, wrote the New York Times.

At the time there were no fences surrounding the Bowl so ticket holders were not required to show their tickets until they reached the entrance to one of the portals.

The total take for the Bowl’s opening day was more than $139,000, which was split between the two schools.

Yale Bowl opening commemorative program illustrated by the Tuttle Printing Co. described the construction of the Bowl.

(YALE ATHLETICS)

The Yale-Harvard opening-game day program

(YALE ATHLETICS)

Harvard Spoils the Party

Harvard came into the contest undefeated (6-0-2) and on a twenty-eight-game unbeaten streak that started in 1911. They would extend their run to thirty-three games, a streak that would end in the middle of the 1915 season. Yale captain Nelson Talbott predicted victory and trainer Johnny Mack declared the 7-1 Elis fit for the game. But Harvard dominated the Bulldogs, winning 36-0. One journalist-wag wrote, Yale had the Bowl but Harvard had the punch. Talbott took the loss hard. He was so despondent because Yale lost that he walked the streets of New Haven all night, said Nelson Talbott Jr. who wore the Yale blue in the early ’40s.

Harvard All-American end Tack Hardwick, whom Grantland Rice called dynamite on the football field, scored the first touchdown and points in Bowl history on a five-yard pass from All-American Eddie Packy Mahan, who kicked the first field goal at the Bowl in the second quarter. Mahan also caught a touchdown pass and personally accounted for 15 points that day.

History was made in another way as well, when Harvard’s All-American end Thomas Jefferson Coolidge returned a fumble 98 yards. Coolidge’s play still stands as the longest fumble return at the Yale Bowl.

The first Bowl game was not without controversy, albeit minor. All-American back Charley Brickley had missed most of the season because of an appendectomy. The Harvard players wanted Brickley to play against Yale in the new Bowl but the doctors nixed the idea. Despite that, Brickley entered the game late in the fourth quarter under bogus circumstances. He was allowed to stand behind the action and watch while the other ten Harvards drove down the field for the final touchdown. Brickley then kicked the extra point.

At the